Water for Peace in the Middle East

Its rare to hear a good news story from this region. But Israelis and Palestinians are laying a new foundation for peace as they work together to restore the polluted Alexander River. The project won the 2003 International Riverprize.(First broadcast 6/9/03)

Transcript

Alexandra de Blas: Most often when we hear of Israel or Palestine, it means bad news. But just a few months ago an inspiring river restoration project from the region won the prestigious one-hundred-thousand-dollar International River Prize, awarded annually in Queensland.

The Alexander River Project works to improve water quality from Nablus in Palestine, across Israel and out to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Chairman of the River's Administration, Nachum Itzkovitz and Project Manager, Amos Brandeis visited Australia to accept the award. And they took time out to speak about the progress they've made.

Amos Brandeis: First of all, as you know, ecology knows no political borders, and the problem of pollution, which means illness, which means deterioration of the ecology, which means mosquitoes on both sides and so on, that's a problem of both sides. Now the leaders on the local level could see that it is possible to do something for the sake of the people who live there on both sides of the border, and Nachum Itzkovitz was with me here. He initiated this process in 1996 when he went to the Governor of Tul Karem and said, 'Let's do something together, let's forget about the big problems, and let's start with one step forward', and we did quite a good progress since then, trying to put aside all the big problems and facing the smaller ones where we can do something.

Alexandra de Blas: Can you give me an example of one of the specific projects that you've worked together on along the river?

Nachum Itzkovitz: Cleaning the pools. In Tul Karem region, the pools there, the wastewater pools collapsed, and there is a big flow of wastewater in the region. And we've got the money, I must say, and we thank the German government, we're working on building again all the pools.

Amos Brandeis: The long-term goal is to build sewage treatment plant on the border operated by both sides. But in the short-term, we do the first stage which we call the Emergency Project built on our side, and this is clearing the sewage water. It's not the quality we need in the river, but it is a much better quality than flows in.

Alexandra de Blas: With this level of effluent in the water, what sort of wildlife is still surviving around the river, and within it?

Amos Brandeis: Well surprisingly, there's still quite a lot of wildlife in the river. First of all we have huge Nile soft-shelled turtles living in the river.

Alexandra de Blas: You say huge, how big is huge?

Amos Brandeis: One metre, 20, they weight up to 70 kilos, and they're really unique. They used to be in all rivers on the Eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea, but they died because of the pollution in all other rivers.What we prepared for the turtles first of all is basking areas, they have to lay in the sun to get warmer, and we also made protected egg-laying areas for them, and we even collect their eggs from the nests and put them in a special place, and after the new-borns come out, we return them to the river. We have other ecological projects, like returning fish to the river, like introducing the wildlife and the flora and fauna that was before pollution of the river. We also have constructed fish ladders and we developed quite a few parks for the public to come and see, and learn about the potential of the river restoration.

Alexandra de Blas: Ismael Serageldin back in the mid-'90s made the comment that was reported widely that wars in the last century were fought over oil, but the wars of this century would be fought over water. There's been a lot of arguments put up against that, but you're in one of the direst and most politically explosive regions on the planet; what do you think about that, do you think there'll be wars over water this century?

Nachum Itzkovitz: Well from the ancient times, from the Biblical time of course, it was one of the reasons of war in the world, and if the leadership deals not in the right way, it could be that we will have war because of lack of water. But we are ready in Israel to share the water with the Palestinians; due to the Oslo Agreement, a certain amount of water that we have to give to the Palestinians, we are going into the salination, we must give them good water for drinking, and to agriculture, and of course we are willing to give them recycling water which is one of the unique projects in our region because we are using more than 20-million cubic metres for the agricultural recycling water, waste water. So if we will deal with that in the right way, we can avoid a war and conflict because of the lack of water in our region.

Alexandra de Blas: You do hear stories that you have almost side by side, Israelis with water enough to fill swimming pools and Palestinians just next door just getting enough water to live; how do you see those sorts of claims?

Nachum Itzkovitz: Well it's a political question, and I'm not so sure I want to answer it, but the system in the Palestinian authority right now and the water system is very old, they don't have a modern storage for their water, and that's why the media shows it all the time, but the Israelis gave them all the amount of water that they do need, but they don't have the pipes and all the kinds of equipment that can bring the water all over the Palestinian authority areas and they've got the money from the donor countries, from the European countries and still they didn't build the system. So the question is how -

Alexandra de Blas: How to improve their distribution systems?

Nachum Itzkovitz: Yes. And it's a lot of money and a lot of problems, technical problems. This is the answer.

Amos Brandeis: The question of the water is actually about a common vision in the area of corporation and money, and if our leaders will have those three, I think they can solve the problem, and we have to look for a better future in the Middle East.

Alexandra de Blas: Amos Brandeis and Nachum Itzkovitz, working to restore the Alexander River. Their project won the 2003 International River Prize.